Advice?? diving 4 acre catfish & carp private tournament lake-fish 20lbs-70+lbs

[Matt P]

Yeah - what Ber Rabbit said.

Seriously, be very careful. I fish lakes like that. There will be lots of monofilament to get wrapped up in. It's intentionally designed to be difficult to see under water. The weeds in our tournament lakes around here get very thick in the summer. They easily wrap around a canoe paddle. Yikes...

 

[UnderSeaBumbleBee]

thanks for the replies.

Nope, can't do any spearing in the lake. Besides, as a newbie, that might be task overload.

Vis, you can't see straight down the in water, not sure what the vis would be horizonally.

So far things to check.
1 Electricty on aerators and how they function: prop or suction heads
2 Weeds and other entaglement
3 Inquire as to how much gear is usually lost in the lake and watch for mono
4 Prepare dive navigation plan for compass
5 Have alernate system to keep in touch with buddy--contact line and underwater sound device and have signals to indicate trouble via both methods agreed upon before dive. Practice said communication in better vis situation.

 

[fishoutawater]

Might be a bad idea. Especially with the weeds if there's a lot of them. Not only are they an entanglement hazzard, but you'll find that if you have to fight your way through them, and the fish will be nowhere in sight, even with good vis (> 2 ft).
One guy I overheard in a dive shop said his technique was to purposely send up a silt cloud as he went, keeping himself hidden inside the cloud, but close enough to the edge that he could see the fish outside the cloud. Well I tried that, and due to having to struggle through the weeds, I was making way too much commotion. Never saw anything. And once I'd silted it up once, it stayed silted the rest of the day.
Now one technique that does work on carp, is to take a bag of field corn and soak it in the water, let it sit on the dock for a day or two to get it fermenting. Then hang it in the water off the dock. Let it hang there for a while to draw in the carp. Then slip into the water on the other side of the dock holding a big rock and your spear gun. You'll scare them off, but if you sit motionless at the bottom in the weeds with the rock in your lap for as long as you can, they'll soon come back and start sucking the bag, then just shoot one. Don't know if it's legal or not, but it works. I used to do that for hours when I was a kid, with just a mask and fins and a homemade Hawain sling. If you shoot a big one, be prepared to get a free tour of the entire pond. But if there's a lot of Bluegills in the pond, they'll make it so there's no way you can sit still. I hated Bluegills.
Come to think of it, I've never tried it with scuba, but I imagine the bubbles could be a problem.

Ah, ok, no spearing. You must've posted that while I was typing.

 

[Ber Rabbit]

Vis, you can't see straight down the in water, not sure what the vis would be horizonally.

The experience I've had is that vis is always better vertically than horizontally, often MUCH better. Sounds like you may not be able to see your gauge with it pressed to your mask in that pond. That vis statement combined with your posted experience level tell me the danger meter for this dive just spiked.

So far things to check.
1 Electricty on aerators and how they function: prop or suction heads
2 Weeds and other entaglement
3 Inquire as to how much gear is usually lost in the lake and watch for mono
4 Prepare dive navigation plan for compass
5 Have alernate system to keep in touch with buddy--contact line and underwater sound device and have signals to indicate trouble via both methods agreed upon before dive. Practice said communication in better vis situation.

You cannot "watch for mono" even in good visibility it's almost impossible to see. You will not know you found some until you find yourself tangled in it. Now you are essentially blindfolded and tangled in something you can't see that has to be located and removed while still wearing the blindfold. Oh, and you have to keep track of your buddy too.

A buddy line is going to be a bit of a PITA if the weed cover is heavy because it will catch and drag every weed it comes in contact with. You'll be pulling half the weeds in the pond along with you while you fight your way through the other half. The weeds wrap around your arms, hoses, over the top of your second stage under your nose, around your fins and fin straps and around your first stage. They constantly pull on your legs and about the time you start ignoring them something else ties you up. I ended up hog tied to a Pontiac once by a buoy line that had one end loose in the weeds. First my legs were tied together (which I ignored--thought it was just weeds) I couldn't even flutter kick I had to dolphin kick; then my fins were jerked up behind my back. That's when I decided the weeds had p****d me off and I reached to tear them off and found rope rather than weeds wrapped around my legs and first stage.

Sound devices. Remember you cannot "echo locate" underwater, if the visibility is zero and your buddy gets tangled you may not know it happened. If you happen to move ahead of him before he uses the sound device you're going to have to run a search pattern to find him. The sound will most likely reverberate through the entire pond possibly sending you on a wild goose chase. Now you have to decide how long to look before you surface for help and who is going to help you find him before he dies if he can't get himself untangled. If you're searching and the sound stops one of two things has happened, he's free and has surfaced to find you or he's dead.

Please be very, very careful. No dive is worth dying for.
Ber :lilbunny:

 

[Hank49]

You want to improve the vis? An old golf course lake trick....we had to do it in the summertime or the algae would be so thick, your ball would sit on top of it....fill a burlap sack with copper sulfate chips and putt around the lake with it slowly dissolving. You'll have crystal clear water in about 2 days. It won't hurt the fish but it'll kill all the algae and invertebrates. Just make sure those aerators are working though because your oxygen production from photosynthesis will dip to 0.

 

[strongbow]

Stay away from the dam's lake drain, if he has any out flow the hydrolics of out flowing water could trap you in or up against it's drain and unless you are S:fruit: :fruit: uperman you would not be able to free yourself.

 

[UnderSeaBumbleBee]

Not sure how to change my dive profile, I keep trying but the system won't let me. After this weekend, I will be close to if not over 30 open water dives. Still a newbie but learning more with each dive. Have done the AOW classroom work, just need to do the check out dives. Probably will have a few more weekends of diving under my belt before the carp ponds and will have my AOW check outs done.

If the weeds are bad I will wait until winter time and possibly the next time he knocks the bloom down some. If I can see a lot of weeds I would stay clear of the dive. That really is a significant concern. I can pick a day when no one is fishing, or he has agreed to have everyone pull up their lines me for a short time.

As for me adding something to the water, it is a commercial fishing business, so I won't be adding any chemicals to change things up in the water.

The buddy that wants to come along is an assistant instructor and part of the county swift water rescue and the search and dive rescue/ recovery team.

How does time of day affect water with a heavy bloom and the way light is refracted through it? What is the best time of day or light condition for diving such water?